Latest news with #CleanAirAct
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Health
- Yahoo
NAACP calls for emergency shutdown of Musk's supercomputer in Memphis
Local regulators should immediately stop Elon Musk's supercomputer project from operating in South Memphis because it's out of compliance with environmental rules, the NAACP wrote in a letter sent Thursday to Shelby County officials. The civil rights group addressed the request to Dr. Michelle Taylor, director of the Shelby County Health Department, and to the commissioners of Memphis Light Gas and Water. The health department is responsible for implementing federal air regulations in Shelby County, which encompasses Memphis. 'Being the world's richest man doesn't give you the right to pollute Black communities and jeopardize the health of its residents,' NAACP president and CEO Derrick Johnson said in a statement to NBC News. 'We urge the health department to step in immediately.' When contacted, a spokesperson for Memphis Light Gas and Water said it had not received the NAACP letter and could not comment on it. Neither the health department nor xAI immediately responded to questions about the letter, which was also signed by the presidents of the Tennessee and Memphis chapters of the NAACP. In a previous statement to NBC News, xAI said its "operations comply with all applicable laws' and that it 'works collaboratively with County and City officials, EPA personnel, and community leaders regarding all things that affect Memphis.' xAI has come under scrutiny in recent months for operating methane gas turbines at its Memphis facility to meet the electricity needs of the supercomputer Colossus. The turbines emit pollutants, including nitrogen oxides and formaldehyde, according to their manufacturer. Environmental groups and the NAACP believe the turbines required permits under the Clean Air Act; the city's health department, the mayor and the Chamber of Commerce have said permits were not required for the turbines' first year of use. xAI, which is now seeking a permit for 15 permanent turbines, said those would be equipped with pollution controls and only be used as backup once other energy options are available. Earlier this month, NBC News reported on a South Memphis neighborhood called Boxtown, about two miles from xAI's facility, where residents are concerned that Musk's project will harm the area's already poor air quality. 'They got money. And they can do what they want to do, you know, without consulting us,' said Easter Knox, who has lived in the area since 1977. Knox told NBC News she and her husband both struggle with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, which can be exacerbated by pollution. Health department officials have been limited in their comments about the project. On Friday, news broke that Taylor, the department head, would be leaving Shelby County to oversee the Baltimore City Health Department. Colossus, which xAI calls the world's largest supercomputer, came online in September 2024 to train Grok, the company's chatbot. But critics say the project's potential economic benefit to the community is outweighed by environmental concerns. 'While we applaud research and innovation,' the NAACP letter states, 'there must be limits that ensure that communities are healthy and alive to enjoy the benefits of any potential innovation.' Shelby County health officials are expected to make a decision on xAI's application in the coming weeks. Memphis Mayor Paul Young previously told NBC's "Nightly News" that the city plans to work with a researcher to implement air monitoring in the months ahead. This article was originally published on
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Opinion - We need to simplify environmental permits to boost their impact
In the clash between the competing pro-petroleum and pro-climate visions of the economy, few policy issues are as misunderstood and complicated as our nation's environmental permitting systems. The number of permitting actions is enormous. During a single presidential term, approximately 1.5 million permitting, informal review, and consultation processes are overseen under just five environmental and historic preservation laws. Many of these cover minor actions that would never have required permits in the 1970s and 1980s. Consider the National Environmental Policy Act. Roughly 400,000 'categorical exclusions' are processed under this law each presidential term, compared to about 1,000 major reviews called 'environmental impact statements.' An exclusion isn't an absence of review; instead, it is akin to a simpler kind of permit. There are categorical exclusions to cover summer picnics by federal agencies, a 90- to 120-day exclusion process for a loan to replace powerlines across North Dakota wheat fields, or exclusions for every Agriculture Department grant to a farmer. Most exclusions involve minimal staff hours and are completed in weeks to months, making it hard to object to any one review. But collectively, their issuance requires hundreds of staff and millions of days of project delays. Over four years, about a million similar, small permit processes will run their course under the Endangered Species Act, Clean Water Act, Clean Air Act and especially the National Historic Preservation Act. Yet almost all the attention on reform has focused on the small number of 'big' permits. For example, President Biden's permitting team reported cutting 25 percent off the average processing time for those 1,000 major environmental impact statements, compared to the first Trump administration, whose permits were also faster than the administration of Obama. On big permits, Democratic administrations have favored adding staff to write and review documents. That strategy works, but it can be hard to maintain, particularly if agency budgets get cut. And most of the laborious steps to finish an impact statement remained unchanged, with some becoming more expansive. Republicans tend to favor the wholesale elimination of major permits — at least for fossil fuel infrastructure — and cutting staff. That pattern showed up across President Trump's executive orders. If maintained by courts and Congress, those orders would eliminate some National Environmental Policy Act regulations and skip most requirements to protect clean water and endangered wildlife by calling permit issuance an emergency. Democrats are increasingly flirting with exemptions for different categories of projects — wind and solar instead of oil and gas, for example. A problem with taking away major permits is that they often have very significant impacts on things that communities in both red and blue states value. Permit reviews can produce much less harmful outcomes. Addressing the millions of smaller permits is a missed opportunity with fewer downsides. First, we should entirely eliminate thousands of small permits by defining the actions they cover as not 'major federal actions' — the original, intended scope of the National Environmental Policy Act. For instance, a provision in proposed permitting legislation redefines all grants and loans this way. This change would benefit thousands of towns, cities, nonprofits and businesses that receive federal funding and wouldn't affect public input because few categorical exclusions ever involve the public in the first place. Second, we can improve remaining small permit processes by expanding reforms that have proven successful in dramatically accelerating timelines and reducing workload while still avoiding or compensating for harms caused by projects. For example, government agencies are increasingly using technology-based 'dashboards' that allow anyone to track the status of an application and exactly which staff are reviewing it. Virginia has achieved the greatest success with this technology, alongside procedural reforms, delivering an expected 70 percent reduction in application review times for 200,000 state decisions over four years. The Department of Energy is piloting AI technologies that could allow more than 80 percent of small permit documents to be machine written. Self-permitting under general permits is another promising reform. Projects that agree to use what are effectively common-sense best practices to avoid harm are automatically approved if they submit the paperwork that proves those practices will be followed. General permits exist under clean water and wildlife laws, although the paperwork required to get these automatic approvals could still be significantly reduced. Offsets — which are opportunities to compensate for unavoidable environmental impacts — also help. Having a supply of pre-approved beneficial offsets has sped up some Clean Water Act permitting by 50 percent. We can't build everything Americans want without having any environmental effect, and having offsets available allows unavoidable harm to be balanced with benefits to similar environmental features nearby. The most important change needed to improve or eliminate millions of small procedures is a culture shift among both permitting agencies and permit applicants. Many government staff are dedicated public servants, but some view institutional caution as a mission and environmental permitting as a battleground instead of an opportunity to problem-solve with constituents. On the other side, many applicants blame agencies when they themselves have submitted flawed or incomplete applications, proposed unreasonable projects, or rejected the idea of regulatory oversight, failing to respect the reality that most Americans want to unlock growth while also stewarding the environment. Making a million small processes more agile, responsive and effective is a key step toward a government that strikes these balances, and that serves the needs of all Americans. Timothy Male is the executive director of the nonprofit Environmental Policy Innovation Center. Dave Owen is an environmental law expert at UC Law San Francisco, specializing in water, land use and administrative law. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
NBC News
3 days ago
- Business
- NBC News
NAACP calls for emergency shutdown of Musk's supercomputer in Memphis
Local regulators should immediately stop Elon Musk's supercomputer project from operating in South Memphis because it's out of compliance with environmental rules, the NAACP wrote in a letter sent Thursday to Shelby County officials. The civil rights group addressed the request to Dr. Michelle Taylor, director of the Shelby County Health Department and to the commissioners of Memphis Light Gas and Water. The health department is responsible for implementing federal air regulations in Shelby County, which encompasses Memphis. 'Being the world's richest man doesn't give you the right to pollute Black communities and jeopardize the health of its residents,' NAACP president and CEO Derrick Johnson said in a statement to NBC News. 'We urge the health department to step in immediately.' When contacted, a spokesperson for Memphis Light Gas and Water said it had not received the NAACP letter and could not comment on it. Neither the health department nor xAI immediately responded to questions about the letter, which was also signed by the presidents of the Tennessee and Memphis chapters of the NAACP. In a previous statement to NBC News, xAI said its "operations comply with all applicable laws' and that it 'works collaboratively with County and City officials, EPA personnel, and community leaders regarding all things that affect Memphis.' xAI has come under scrutiny in recent months for operating methane gas turbines at its Memphis facility to meet the electricity needs of the supercomputer Colossus. The turbines emit pollutants, including nitrogen oxides and formaldehyde, according to their manufacturer. Environmental groups and the NAACP believe the turbines required permits under the Clean Air Act; the city's health department, the mayor and the Chamber of Commerce have said permits were not required for the turbines' first year of use. xAI, which is now seeking a permit for 15 permanent turbines, said those would be equipped with pollution controls and only be used as backup once other energy options are available. Earlier this month, NBC News reported on a South Memphis neighborhood called Boxtown, about two miles from xAI's facility, where residents are concerned that Musk's project will harm the area's already poor air quality. 'They got money. And they can do what they want to do, you know, without consulting us,' said Easter Knox, who has lived in the area since 1977. Knox told NBC News she and her husband both struggle with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, which can be exacerbated by pollution. Health department officials have been limited in their comments about the project. On Friday, news broke that Taylor, the department head, would be leaving Shelby County to oversee the Baltimore City Health Department. Colossus, which xAI calls the world's largest supercomputer, came online in September 2024 to train Grok, the company's chatbot. But critics say the project's potential economic benefit to the community is outweighed by environmental concerns. 'While we applaud research and innovation,' the NAACP letter states, 'there must be limits that ensure that communities are healthy and alive to enjoy the benefits of any potential innovation.' Shelby County health officials are expected to make a decision on xAI's application in the coming weeks. Memphis Mayor Paul Young previously told NBC's "Nightly News" that the city plans to work with a researcher to implement air monitoring in the months ahead.
The Hill
3 days ago
- Politics
- The Hill
We need to simplify environmental permits to boost their impact
In the clash between the competing pro-petroleum and pro-climate visions of the economy, few policy issues are as misunderstood and complicated as our nation's environmental permitting systems. The number of permitting actions is enormous. During a single presidential term, approximately 1.5 million permitting, informal review, and consultation processes are overseen under just five environmental and historic preservation laws. Many of these cover minor actions that would never have required permits in the 1970s and 1980s. Consider the National Environmental Policy Act. Roughly 400,000 'categorical exclusions' are processed under this law each presidential term, compared to about 1,000 major reviews called 'environmental impact statements.' An exclusion isn't an absence of review; instead, it is akin to a simpler kind of permit. There are categorical exclusions to cover summer picnics by federal agencies, a 90- to 120-day exclusion process for a loan to replace powerlines across North Dakota wheat fields, or exclusions for every Agriculture Department grant to a farmer. Most exclusions involve minimal staff hours and are completed in weeks to months, making it hard to object to any one review. But collectively, their issuance requires hundreds of staff and millions of days of project delays. Over four years, about a million similar, small permit processes will run their course under the Endangered Species Act, Clean Water Act, Clean Air Act and especially the National Historic Preservation Act. Yet almost all the attention on reform has focused on the small number of 'big' permits. For example, President Biden's permitting team reported cutting 25 percent off the average processing time for those 1,000 major environmental impact statements, compared to the first Trump administration, whose permits were also faster than the administration of Obama. On big permits, Democratic administrations have favored adding staff to write and review documents. That strategy works, but it can be hard to maintain, particularly if agency budgets get cut. And most of the laborious steps to finish an impact statement remained unchanged, with some becoming more expansive. Republicans tend to favor the wholesale elimination of major permits — at least for fossil fuel infrastructure — and cutting staff. That pattern showed up across President Trump's executive orders. If maintained by courts and Congress, those orders would eliminate some National Environmental Policy Act regulations and skip most requirements to protect clean water and endangered wildlife by calling permit issuance an emergency. Democrats are increasingly flirting with exemptions for different categories of projects — wind and solar instead of oil and gas, for example. A problem with taking away major permits is that they often have very significant impacts on things that communities in both red and blue states value. Permit reviews can produce much less harmful outcomes. Addressing the millions of smaller permits is a missed opportunity with fewer downsides. First, we should entirely eliminate thousands of small permits by defining the actions they cover as not 'major federal actions' — the original, intended scope of the National Environmental Policy Act. For instance, a provision in proposed permitting legislation redefines all grants and loans this way. This change would benefit thousands of towns, cities, nonprofits and businesses that receive federal funding and wouldn't affect public input because few categorical exclusions ever involve the public in the first place. Second, we can improve remaining small permit processes by expanding reforms that have proven successful in dramatically accelerating timelines and reducing workload while still avoiding or compensating for harms caused by projects. For example, government agencies are increasingly using technology-based 'dashboards' that allow anyone to track the status of an application and exactly which staff are reviewing it. Virginia has achieved the greatest success with this technology, alongside procedural reforms, delivering an expected 70 percent reduction in application review times for 200,000 state decisions over four years. The Department of Energy is piloting AI technologies that could allow more than 80 percent of small permit documents to be machine written. Self-permitting under general permits is another promising reform. Projects that agree to use what are effectively common-sense best practices to avoid harm are automatically approved if they submit the paperwork that proves those practices will be followed. General permits exist under clean water and wildlife laws, although the paperwork required to get these automatic approvals could still be significantly reduced. Offsets — which are opportunities to compensate for unavoidable environmental impacts — also help. Having a supply of pre-approved beneficial offsets has sped up some Clean Water Act permitting by 50 percent. We can't build everything Americans want without having any environmental effect, and having offsets available allows unavoidable harm to be balanced with benefits to similar environmental features nearby. The most important change needed to improve or eliminate millions of small procedures is a culture shift among both permitting agencies and permit applicants. Many government staff are dedicated public servants, but some view institutional caution as a mission and environmental permitting as a battleground instead of an opportunity to problem-solve with constituents. On the other side, many applicants blame agencies when they themselves have submitted flawed or incomplete applications, proposed unreasonable projects, or rejected the idea of regulatory oversight, failing to respect the reality that most Americans want to unlock growth while also stewarding the environment. Making a million small processes more agile, responsive and effective is a key step toward a government that strikes these balances, and that serves the needs of all Americans. Timothy Male is the executive director of the nonprofit Environmental Policy Innovation Center. Dave Owen is an environmental law expert at UC Law San Francisco, specializing in water, land use and administrative law.
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Oil companies are facing the first-ever climate change wrongful death lawsuit
In what could become a landmark case for climate accountability, a Washington state woman has filed a wrongful death lawsuit believed to be the first of its kind against major oil companies, claiming they contributed to her mother's death during the 2021 Pacific Northwest heat wave. The suit, filed Thursday in King County Superior Court by Misti Leon, alleges that seven oil companies — ExxonMobil (XOM), Chevron (CVX), BP (BP), Shell (SHEL), ConocoPhillips (COP), Phillips 66 (PSX), and Olympic Pipeline (a BP subsidiary) — knowingly fueled climate change, misled the public about the risks, and failed to warn consumers about the deadly consequences. Leon's mother, Julie, died of hyperthermia on Seattle's hottest day on record. The filing says 'Julie is a victim of Defendants' conduct.' 'For most of Julie's life, Defendants knew the unabated use of their fossil fuel products was altering the climate, which would result in catastrophic harm to the planet and humanity, and lead to deaths like Julie's,' the complaint states. 'Instead of warning the public and consumers about the dangers of their products, Defendants launched a campaign of deception to downplay and discredit the risks of climate change and ensure growing demand for their fossil fuel products.' The filing adds that 'the extreme heat that killed Julie was directly linked to fossil fuel-driven alteration of the climate.' Scientists from the World Weather Attribution said the heat dome event that led to Julie's death would have been 'virtually impossible' without 'human-caused climate change.' The heat dome event lasted about a week from late June to early July, and there were 100 heat-related deaths, according to the Washington State Department of Health. 'I would never have in a million years guessed that a heat dome and climate change would be what killed my mother and what took her from me,' Leon told the New York Times. 'There's no way to comprehend that and to kind of even rationalize it.' In a statement, Chevron counsel Theodore Boutrous Jr. said: 'Exploiting a personal tragedy to promote politicized climate tort litigation is contrary to law, science, and common sense. The court should add this far-fetched claim to the growing list of meritless climate lawsuits that state and federal courts have already dismissed.' None of the other named oil companies immediately responded to a request for comment. The defendants have not yet filed legal responses. Industry groups, including the American Petroleum Institute, have consistently argued that climate change is a complex global issue requiring coordinated policy responses, not courtroom battles. Many such lawsuits have faced procedural setbacks, with some dismissed by judges citing federal jurisdiction or the Clean Air Act. But others are advancing: The Supreme Court earlier this year allowed climate cases brought by Honolulu and several states to move forward. Still, legal experts say Leon's case could mark a turning point. While more than two dozen states and cities have sued oil companies for climate-related damages, this appears to be the first attempt to hold the fossil fuel industry liable for an individual death allegedly caused by a climate disaster. 'This case puts a human face on the consequences of climate inaction,' Yale Law School professor Douglas Kysar told NPR. 'It's not just rising seas or disappearing glaciers — it's the death of a mother.' The Center for Climate Integrity, a nonprofit that supports climate litigation efforts, worked with Leon to file the lawsuit. 'Big Oil companies have known for decades that their products would cause catastrophic climate disasters that would become more deadly and destructive if they didn't change their business model,' Richard Wiles, president of the Center for Climate Integrity, said in a statement. 'Big Oil's victims deserve accountability. This is an industry that is causing and accelerating climate conditions that kill people.' For the latest news, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
